Leading With My Left

When that pattern interrupt is your body trying to tell you that something is amiss (I wrote about the pattern interrupt we call pain in the last post) you end up learning a few more lessons.

As I mentioned in that post, the last 18 months have offered many personal and professional challenges.

I got sick, I published one book and completed another.

I lost some friends, I gained some amazing but challenging clients.

I had pain… I kept working.

None of those things are unconnected, of course.

While many of my friends and clients either have published books or have a goal of doing so, I had never considered myself a Writer (a writer, sure, but that was just a job requirement - to be a Writer with a Capital W meant something different to me) nor did I aspire to be one. Publishing a book put me far too much in the public eye for me to feel safe. So I got sick.

Losing friends is hard, even when you understand what’s happening. This was harder. Because these were friends I never expected to lose.

I asked myself what I was doing to attract this kind of treatment. And the answer came from an unexpected corner. On a whim, and because she came recommended by Kimberly Schneider whom I respect and admire without reservation, I had an Akashic Reading with Heather Gray.

I keep an open mind about spiritual and energy readings. I know that the connection exists and that it can be navigated, I also know that some people who claim to be able to navigate it are fooling themselves and others. So on the rare occasions I do have an experience that makes all my internal lights go WOW, I pay attention.

Heather gave me a lot to ponder, but the internal dashboard really lit up when she said, “I don’t see you as being AT a crossroads, it’s more like you ARE the crossroads.”

She went on to ask if people came into my life at times of indecision, transition, rebirth or transformation.

Well yes, both personally and professionally. That’s been true for me as long as I can remember.

During the rest of our session it began to dawn on me, the friends who left my life either forcefully or because they just didn’t feel connected to me anymore, had been at a crossroad when we first connected. And then they weren’t. And that changed how we related, until sometimes we didn’t relate. Which, in some cases, made them angry, trying to pull me back into the relationship they had had with me before. And in some cases it just made our relationship irrelevant, and they faded away with only a twinge of guilt.

Which didn’t make it less painful to not have those people in my life. But it made it easier to understand, and accept.

And it freed me to take on some client work that I would felt ill-prepared for before having that realization. Which has been rewarding in every sense of the word.

But the pain continued to build. Until I literally had to say “I CAN’T do this anymore.”

First it was a frozen right shoulder.

Then my right knee went whacky. (I know, medical terminology intimidates me too!) This wasn’t just pain – this was a complete rebellion!

Then it was my right hip, the “psoas muscle” if we want to get really intimidating with the terminology.

I literally could not dress myself because my right foot could not lift even two inches off the floor.

I don’t mean I couldn’t lift it without pain. I mean my brain said to my hip flexor muscle, “Please lift the foot” and the muscle cocked an eyebrow, shot back a snarky grin, and said, “That’s a really nice idea. But we won’t be doing that today.”

So while I was having that argument with the right side of my body, I had to come to terms with depending on the left.

I went up and down stairs by putting my left foot where I wanted the rest of me to be, holding tight to the railing with my left hand, and then encouraging my right side to follow.

I reached for things with my left arm, I even moved the computer mouse to the left side (although mine isn’t designed for that and neither am I.)

Now I’ve always joked that the left side of my body does not really communicate with my brain. I always figured it had a mind of its own.

As it turned out, when I was forced by this rather inarguable pattern interrupt to use it, I learned that my left side not only has a mind of its own, it’s smarter in some ways than my right. It’s more graceful in some ways than my right. It’s more creative, in pretty much every way, than my right.

And by using my left side I not only let the over-used muscles on my right side recover, I wrote several poems, one that totally that blows my mind and has become the basis for an entire new blog site called Come Truthing, I got the courage to send the fiction manuscript I’ve been sitting on for two years off to a friend who works in the publishing industry, I mapped out the EXACT group coaching platform I’ve been dying to launch, and I crocheted two gorgeous scarves when I hadn’t held a crochet hook in close to 20 years.

And I learned something.

I learned that just because you “can’t” do it the way you used to do it, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it at all.

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7 Comments

Katrina Plumb on April 27, 2014 at 7:56 pm

Dixie, it is not just yourself you are leading.

I had been planning on utilising your Dynamite University resources – or at least the ‘pick Dixie’s brain’ part; did you know the creative right brain controls the left side of the body? – in order to coach me through running a sophisticated Facebook page researching all aspects of autoimmunity. I have academic overwhelm at the moment, but hope to be free of the ‘load’, if not the ‘whelm’ by June, so then it will be a case of serious work.

All of the health blocks, I am experiencing, are compounded by my obstinacy, which has stood me in good stead to eliminate the need for insulin for 5 months last summer, but ground to a mind-/gut-wrenching halt when the weather clouded over in October and has been overshadowing my intellect ever since. Medical wisdom calls this the ‘honeymoon period’ for type 1 diabetes and after five years of defying their theories I am coming to the conclusion they may have been right all along . . . but this is another hypothesis. What is clear is that I never chose to settle down Diabetes, and if the English weather forecasts chronic pattern interrupt, there are other places to live.

I have such misgivings about my value as a friend, when my entire energy system keeps threatening to shut down. It would not be a case of half dead; I never do things by halves. But in order to end hopelessness, I need to ‘Seek not [my] truth in absolutes’. I may need to engage with the very doctors, who have been directing me towards insulin dependency, in order to restore my powerful balance and appreciate the subtle requirements of my shadow. Reliability is not ALL it is about. Flexibility is what I crave.

It’s a little over-whelming to me to remember it is not just myself I am leading. For I am led right now by something outside of my understanding. But I do know this – our value, as friends, as leaders, as beings, does NOT depend on our situation or circumstances. We seek our truths, we swallow them whole, and they bloom in us in their own way. That is value. All my sides crave flexibility – but I crave truth more.

Missed the daily doses, but glad your were taking the much needed time to recharge. Wish I were closer too attend the upcoming event…would be there in a heart beat. Will be there in spirit though. Enjoy, relax, celebrate.